I seem to be mostly posting links at the moment... but, anyway, in their November update the guys on the Microsoft Flight team have set down some minimum and optimum specs for MS Flight, and they look pretty reasonable. It seems they've been doing a lot of work on performance for this release (which is, let's face it, what they needed to do since FSX is such a pig in that respect). Mind you, I'd still be sceptical that you'd get ultra-smooth performance with lots of custom scenery and, say, PMDG loaded up.

The minimum specs are:

CPU: Dual Core 2.0 GHz
GPU: 256 MB card capable of shader 3.0 (DX 9.0c compliant)
HD: 10 GB Hard Drive space
OS: WinXP SP3
RAM: 2.0GB

while the optimum specs are:

CPU: Intel Core i7 960 @ 3.20GHz, AMDŽ Phenom II X6 1100T 3.3 GHz or better
GPU: ATI Radeon HD 5870, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 or better
HD: 10 GB Hard Drive space
OS: Windows 7 64-bit
RAM: 6GB

This is the config they're saying you can max the sliders on and still expect good framerates, basically.

There's also a nice new set of screenshots, and a hint at a big announcement in December. I don't think it'll be an early release, my money is on a Summer 2012 debut, but perhaps a public beta. I'm certainly looking forward to taking it for a spin and putting it up against the latest X-Plane betas and Prepar3d.

Can't link directly to the post as the site is Flash-based, but you can find it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/games/flight/

NH